NASA is partnering with an innovative toymaker to show kids how they can get involved in a whole new frontier: building space gadgetry.

In 2011, when Ayah Bdeir created her toy line LittleBits, as a student at MIT’s Media Lab, her hope was to make engineering fun and accessible. A collaboration with Korg, an iconic synthesizer company, was a bid to make playing music less intimidating. Now, Bdeir is teaming up with NASA.

“So much is happening with space and our culture right now,” Bdeir told the Journal in an interview. “Cosmos has relaunched on TV, Space X has docked on the ISS, scientists have found a new planet about the size of Earth that could have had water on it at one point. But space still seems out of reach—it’s not personal, not something we can participate in ourselves. That’s what this collaboration is about.”

The LittleBits Space Kit for Earth

LittleBits

Like other LittleBits kits, the Space Kit for Earth, introduced and on sale today, is made up of small, plastic “modules” that snap together magnetically. They form to make all sorts of battery-powered gadgetry. The Space Kit includes 12 modules such as a microphone, a light sensor, a power switch, a speaker, a DC motor, a number module that has a two-digit display and a remote trigger to turn whatever you build on or off.

Along with all the pieces, there are also 10 “hands-on projects” that NASA designed to help kids build specific devices: a mini Mars Rover, a wave generator and a scaled-down satellite dish (which, as LittleBits’ general philosophy, also requires the reuse of a few household items: a paper or plastic bowl and some aluminum foil).

Bdeir says NASA and LittleBits worked together for a year and a half to get the science behind each project just right. Like other LittleBits kits, the Space Kit for Earth isn’t cheap at $189, but it also does plenty regular old LEGO blocks can’t do.

“We try to sense the pulse of society and figure out the fields that people are interested in, but also a bit scared of—engineering, music, space,” she said. “Collaborators like Korg and NASA help us do that, help us show that these fields don’t have to be intimidating.”